The System of the World (102 page)

29
SEPTEMBER
1714

A
TURRETED CASTLE BESTRODE
Holborn. On the side where the gentleman and his host were taking tea, the building sported a noble façade, to make a great impression on riders entering into London from the west. The ground floor was mostly accounted for by the vaulted arch of the gateway. The floor above that contained the machinery for raising and lowering the siege-grade portcullis; this was hidden behind a row of niches in which Liberty, Justice, and other noble ladies took shelter from the rains. This had not prevented their turning a mottled black from coal-smoke. So they glared down like Furies at all who passed beneath. But the next floor up was adorned by a triple Gothick window centered above the highway, rather like the hatch at the top of a German clock, whence the cuckoo popped out on the hour. Behind those windows lay Jack’s new abode. He would not be popping out, however, as they were heavily barred. Indeed, the first resident of this flat must have been a blacksmith, who must’ve lived there for a month, forging those gridirons and setting them into the stone frames. But they were excellent windows, taller than Jack and wider than the span of his arms, and despite the massive bars they admitted a fortune in light.

The Castle, as this part of Newgate Prison was called, was meant for Prisoners of Quality. So it lacked certain facilities that were present in abundance in other parts of the gaol, e.g., iron wall-rings to which difficult prisoners could be fettered. The gaolers had been forced to improvise. A hundred pounds of chain had been looped round some of the window-bars and dragged along the floor to Jack and locked to his ankle-fetters. The chain was long enough that he could hobble to any part of the apartment, save the exit. For the nonce, he was seated at his table, sipping tea.

Standing before his great window and gazing through the grid-work, the visitor enjoyed a view along the road up Snow Hill to the place where it bridged the Fleet Ditch some quarter of a mile away.
Beyond that it swelled to twice or thrice the width, and rambled off among posh squares and courts that had been cow-pastures when Jack was a lad. Much nearer to hand, no more than a bow-shot away, to the right, lay the Church of St. Sepulchre. It was an ancient English church of that school of architecture known to scholars as A Big Pile of Rocks. There, Jack and his fellow Tyburn commuters would be subjected to a tedious rite in one month’s time. So Jack preferred not to let his gaze rest on that Church and especially not its Yard, which had swallowed more dead than it could cleanly digest.

“All of the best apartments in London, it seems, are in bloody Prisons,” said the visitor, “and all of them are occupied by men who are troublesome to me, in one way or another.”

Against those windows he made a perfect Fopp-silhouette, like something snipped out of black paper by an ingenious miniaturist on the Pont-Neuf. From the high-styled ringlets of his periwig down to the bows on his shoes, back up the curves of his well-muscled calves and the perfectly cut skirts of his coat, traveled the eyes of Jack. He wore a scabbard and a small-sword, and Jack thought of flattening him with a swing of the mighty chain, and snatching the weapon. But this would boot him nothing and so to think of it was idle. Jack snapped out of this hyper-violent reverie, and tried to make conversation.

“What, are you speaking of that bloke in the Clink? The famous Dappa?”

“You know that I am,” said Charles White, and turned his back to the view. He reached out absent-mindedly and stroked Jack’s chain where it was looped about the window-bars. “Before this country became so disorderly,
all
of those who were troublesome to their betters were pent up in places such as this. I am pleased that there are still remaining
some
vestiges of civilization.”

“But isn’t that Dappa
more
trouble for you in the Clink?”

“I have plans for Dappa,” said White, “and I have plans for you. And
that
is why facilities such as the Clink and Newgate are so useful; they hold men like you in one place long enough for men like me to make plans.”

“All right,” said Jack, “I knew we’d get round to this, and I am ready for it. You are a tedious and obvious bloke, Mr. White. So I need only ask myself, what’s the most tedious and obvious plan that a man could devise? Why, to have me done away with. Not much of a threat, as one month from to-day I’ve an appointment with Mr. Jack Ketch at Tyburn Cross; and there is no way you could murder me
here
that could be worse than how he’ll carry it off
there
. So you are powerless to issue threats. You must, therefore, offer inducements.”

“You rush ahead so!” White exclaimed. “It were proper, first, to speak of what it is that you must do.”

“There’s nothing in the world I
must
do,” Jack reminded him. “In that sense I’m the freest man in the world. What is it that you are trying to
get
me to do?”

“You are charged with High Treason in the form of coining. Sir Isaac Newton has enough to prove it; there’s little point in offering up a defense. You’ll be asked to plead, guilty or not guilty. It is a necessary formality. If you refuse to enter a plea, you’ll be subject to the
peine forte et dur
—pressing under weights—until you die, or change your mind.”

“I have been coming to Newgate since I was a wee lad, and well know the Standard Procedures,” said Jack. “What is your point?”

“If you agree to make a statement, I’ll see to it that several men are present—not just Sir Isaac. In the presence of those men, you will say that Sir Isaac Newton debased the coinage, and took the gold that he skimmed from Her Majesty’s coffers, and—”

“Pocketed it?”

“No.”

“Gave it to prostitutes?”

“No.”

“Drank it up?”

“No. Used it to perform Alchemical research in the Tower.”

“Oh! Of course. Stupid me,” said Jack, and slapped himself in the forehead so briskly that his ankle-chains jingled. “That were a far more credible accusation.”

“My lord Bolingbroke got wind of it,” White went on, in a peculiar singsong cadence meant to remind Jack that this was the made-up Romance that he was supposed to be memorizing, “and quite properly began to make preparations for a Trial of the Pyx. Hearing of this, the guilty Newton flew into a panic, and reached you, Jack, and induced you and your gang—”

“Gang. Gang. Why is it ever ‘Gang?’ Don’t call them that. It sounds so—I don’t know—
criminal
. They are my family and friends.”

“Induced you and your
associates
to break in to the Tower, open the Pyx, remove the debased guineas that would prove Newton’s guilt, and replace them with sound ones. To make this possible Newton led me and others on a wild goose chase to Shive Tor. You achieved your mission; but it went awry in some small way—here you can make up something plausible—and people found out about it, and now Newton is trying to commit judicial murder on you and your…
associates,
to cover his traces.”

“ ’Twould make for a lively half-hour, relating such a yarn in the
presence of my persecutor, and a panel of a-mazed Big-wigs,” Jack admitted. “As if ’twere a Statue set up in the middle of my Apartment, I shall, in weeks to come, circle round your Proposition and view it from diverse angles and in different lights, and peruse it for Defects.”

“Did you say,
weeks
?” asked the amused/perplexed White. “Because—”

“There is ample time for me to consider it,” Jack said authoritatively. “And I shall consider it far more seriously if you can let me know what I might get out of it, other than a few minutes’ entertainment.”

“Escape,” said Charles White. “Escape to America for you and your…associates in the Fleet Prison.”

Now at this Jack felt moved, at last, to bestir himself, and shuffled across the floor, dragging the chain behind him until he stood at the window, next to Charles White. It had been the tendency of White to gaze down the street and off to the right, which was his not especially subtle way of trying to draw Jack’s attention to the Church of St. Sepulchre, and other grisly land-marks and way-stations along the route of the Hanging-March. But Jack looked rather to the left. Several buildings of note happened to be arranged in a straight line marching off to the southwest. Nearest to hand, just within musketry range, and therefore almost as convenient to the Old Bailey as Newgate, was the Fleet Prison. It was a great thick wall of Building, fuzzy with myriad chimney-pipes, spreading along the banks of the mighty shit-ditch after which it was named. Beyond that, on the opposite side of said ditch, and down a bit, sprawled Bridewell, infested with Females in Trouble. Then there was the Thames, and finally, miles off, he could see the odd spire belonging, he thought, to the Hall or the Abbey at Westminster. All of these were packed firmly in a matrix of unremarkable London buildings, post-Fire, therefore made of coal-blackened brick, and built wall to wall with nothing green, except for the odd fleck where some nest-building bird had stolen a bit of moss or turf from somewhere and been forced to drop it to evade assault by ravens, Nature’s footpads. The only reason that the Fleet Prison could be identified as a separate Institution was that its buildings rose up from the middle of an open plaza; it had grounds, and a perimeter.

“You’d have me believe, then,” said Jack, “that you can spring three blokes out of
there,
as well as
me
out of
here,
on the same night? For you’ll have to do both at the same time. To me it would seem a most difficult thing to put into execution—even if the Whigs
hadn’t
beaten the stuffing out of your party and sent half of ’em packing to
La France
.”

“I must say that I am disappointed to hear such timid and doubtful words from the conqueror of the Tower,” White said.

“
I
had
resources
. You—”

“You underestimate the tenacity and the wealth of my Party. Do not be misled by the temporary departure of Bolingbroke. Rebellion is brewing, Jack. It might take a year or two, but mark my words: Jacobite armies will soon be on the march in this country and shall sweep away the Spawn of the Usurper.”

“That would be the King of England you’re referring to, there?”

“As some style him. To arrange a simple jail-break, or two of them on the same evening, is really a trivial matter, Jack. Particularly from Newgate Prison, which has a history of escapes, by prominent prisoners, almost as illustrious as that of the Tower.”

“As to that I shall have to accept your word,” said Jack, “since none of the blokes I knew here as a lad, ever escaped save via the Treble Tree.”

“Then only ponder the immense value, to my Party, of discrediting Sir Isaac Newton, the coinage of this Realm, and the Whigs, all at a stroke; set aside which, the cost of arranging two jail-breaks is derisory.”

“Sir, you may consider your proposal On the Table,” said Jack, “and after I have waited a decent interval for competing proposals to join it, I shall weigh them all, and arrive at some judicious decision, provided that my old mate, the Imp of the Perverse, does not get the better of me.”

4
OCTOBER
1714

N
EWGATE WAS THE MOST
versatile building in town. It was the Middlesex county gaol, not only for malefactors, but for debtors of both the honest and the dishonest type, and for fines as well. But this was also the City of London’s prison for criminals. It was in that capacity that it now played host to Jack Shaftoe, and hundreds of others who only
wished
they were Jack Shaftoe. But grades and distinctions could be found even within that class. Not all London criminals were footpads, horsepads, shoplifters, file-clys, night-gamesters, running-smoblers,
or till-divers. There were also the Unfortunate Gentlemen, guilty of Treason, Murder, Highway Robbery, Rape, Scandal, Debt, Duelling, Bankruptcy, or Coining. Of all of these except for Rape and Debt, Jack Shaftoe was guilty as charged.

To create a distinct Ward or Hold for each of these classes were a task to which only Noah were equal. But to mix them all in one room were unnatural, or, at least, un-English. Accordingly, Newgate possessed three great divisions. Below the aristocratic confines of the Press-Yard and Castle, where Toffs in Trouble paid their debts to society playing cards in ventilated apartments, but above the loathsome flesh-pits of the Common-Side, was the Master-Side of Newgate. One part of this was for Felons, the other for mere Debtors, but in practice they were all commingled, especially in that part of the prison called the Black Dogg.

Inhabitants of the Press-Yard and Castle looked indistinguishable from any other Persons of Quality, save that they were fettered. Common-Side prisoners tended to be flagrantly, almost gloriously wretched, and even without the heavy chains that they were obliged to wear, could never have been mistaken for anything other than prisoners. Occupants of the Master-Side, however, bore to free Londoners the same relationship as a dried and salted cod, hanging on a rack, did to a live one swimming in the sea: which was to say that most of the same bits were there, and with some squinting, head-cocking, and generous dollops of imagination, you could make in your mind’s eye a picture of what they’d once been. Family and friends would show up from time to time bearing clothing, food, candles, and toiletries, and so most of these were able to keep up some vestiges of whatever looks they’d had before they’d been clapped into irons.

The Visitor looked like one of those. The patches that held his clothing together might have been taken as stigmata of poverty up on Newgate Street, but down here in the Black Dogg, people were apt to look on them as badges or decorations proving that someone out there still knew his name. His black periwig, so ratty and bedraggled, would have earned him mockery had he worn it in Charing Cross, but in the Black Dogg it proved—well, it proved he still had a periwig. More remarks in the same vein could be made concerning his shoes, his stockings, and the three-cornered hat pulled down low over his face. Even his insistent, raspy cough was very typical of Newgate prisoners, as was his low murmuring way of speaking. All in all, anyone familiar with Newgate would have marked him, without a moment’s thought, as a long-term Master-Side Debtor. But then, upon a second look, they would have noted two oddities about the man: one, that there were no irons round his ankles. He was free to
leave. Two, that the ankle-chained bloke he was conversing with was a clean and well-dressed Press-Yard and Castle prisoner, only slumming for a short interval here in the Black Dogg. Divers cudgel-wielding Gaolers and Bailiffs had crowded into the place to keep an eye on this inmate while he passed the time of day with his visitor. But soon enough it had become evident that this old, coughing, out-of-breath, patched, raggedy, down-at-heels gager could not possibly be here as part of any scheme to break Jack Shaftoe out of prison. Or if he were, he could be stopped simply by throwing him an elbow. So the guards had relaxed, and shooed prisoners off benches and away from tables, and taken seats, bought drink from the prisoner-barman, and bided their time, each keeping an eye on Jack from across the room.

“Thank you for coming round,” Jack said to his visitor. “I’d have nipped round to see you, but I’m chained to a great bloody window-grille most days.”

The Visitor twitched and coughed.

“Thought you might like to know,” Jack continued, “that I have been receiving offers from other quarters that are right tempting. More attractive, by a long chalk, than aught that I’ve heard from
you
.”

The Visitor murmured some hot words, and, when words failed him, made flat slicing gestures.

“Oh, I’ve no illusions as to
that,
” Jack assured him. “All has changed since we met here on the 28th of July. There is abundant evidence—as people never tire of telling me—to send me and the boys to Tyburn. So, I am not about to ask you for what we spoke of before: the farm in Carolina.
That
is a pipe-dream. But for Christ’s sake! A man of your intelligence must know that
this
is no kind of tempting offer! A merciful hanging, that is to say, a long drop, a short stop, and a decent burial for me and the boys. You cannot seriously expect me to assist you in exchange for such floor-sweepings. Bloody hell, if I want to die fast, I can make it so in the privacy of my own apartment!”

The Visitor spoke for some little while now, but was cut off, at the end, by a coughing fit; which seemed to bring him such discomfort that he shifted about and writhed on his chair.

“Sore ribs,” was the diagnosis of Doctor Jack Shaftoe. “Oh, I’ve had what you’ve got, sir, a time or two. Bloody torture, ain’t it? An arm or a leg heals in a trice, but ribs take forever.” This seemed to be a sort of patter while he waited for the Visitor’s fit to subside. When the other had finally stifled himself with a handkerchief to the lips, Jack went on: “It is easy enough for me to stand up before anyone you like, put my hand on a Bible, and testify that the coins I took out of the Pyx—
your
coins—were sound, and the ones I put into it—
my
fakes—were debased. But you quite correctly ask, who the hell is going to take
my
word for it? No one in his right mind. So. Yes. Indeed. You, sir, require
hard
evidence, in the form of the
hard
currency that I stole. Where is it, you’d like to know? Well, I already told you before that I gave all of that swag to the late Marquis of Ravenscar. I hoped that’d satisfy you. But as you have been so tiresome on this topic, I have, since the Marquis’s death, made certain inquiries among those of my friends you’ve not yet murdered, thrown into prison, or chased out of the country. And they tell me, sir, that those Sinthias from the Pyx were taken out of Ravenscar’s house after he died by that friend of his, that Daniel Waterhouse, and that this Waterhouse cove placed ’em for safekeeping in a vault or something below the ground out in Clerkenwell—I see by your face that you know the place I mean!” For the greasy wig had begun to bob up and down as the Visitor nodded.

The Visitor pointed something out, and then it was Jack’s turn to nod. “You’ll never come out and say what you mean, but I can translate it well enough into plain talk: without the King’s Messengers to act as your bully boys, you must go through channels now. You can no longer just raid a place like Clerkenwell Court on your personal say-so. You must secure the Authority first. If you would like me to testify before a magistrate that the Pyx coins are secured in that vault, why, I’ll do that, sir, I will. But in exchange I must have freedom for Jimmy and Danny and Tomba. And for myself I want life, is all. Keep me locked up forever, if that is your will; but I’ll not be subjected to all of that rudeness out at Tyburn, and my parts pickled in Jack Ketch his Kitchen.”

The Visitor mumbled something, and clawed at the tabletop until he’d dragged himself to his feet. “See you in a week, then!” Jack said. The Visitor said nothing in return, but turned round, keeping his face to the wall, and tottered out of the Black Dogg.

N
OW SOME OF THE
G
AOLERS
were of a mind to jump up and fetch Jack straightaway back to his parlor up in the Castle. But others had not yet finished their pints. Jack himself had ordered a round for the house only a minute earlier, and had not even begun to quaff from the fresh mug that had just been set before him. It seemed indecent to drag him out just now. So Jack sat, and shook hands and exchanged pleasantries with several prisoners who had the temerity to approach his table, and even kissed a Common-Side wench—almost certainly a Felon, by the looks of her—on the cheek. But after a few minutes there was movement from an adjacent table. Two free men had been sitting there all through Jack’s interview with his visitor: one, younger and quite bulky, the other, of indeterminate age (because
of a wig and a turned-up collar) but with the bony physique of one of those fortunate chaps who has found the knack of spiting age. The big one stayed in his chair, only shifting position so as to bring Jack’s table into the corner of his eye. The slight one got up, went into the corner, and helped himself to a seat. He was gripping a mug—courtesy of Jack! He had not, however, brought it to his lips. Rather, he kept it clenched between his hands so that they would not shake so much. They wanted to shake with rage. No, they wanted to close round the throat of Jack Shaftoe.

Jack enjoyed watching his new visitor for a few minutes. For it took that long for the old man to contain his fury enough to speak.

“How long,” he finally said, “how long have you been whispering those—those abominable lies into the ear of Sir Isaac Newton?”

“For as long as I have been
privy
to his eager ears,” said Jack, “going on two months now. It is something I never looked for. Great men in this town will do backflips to get Ike’s attention for even a moment. Who’d have thought he would listen so avidly to a Vagabond? And yet since he clapped me in irons, I’ve had better entrée to him than the bloody King of England himself. I snap my fingers—there he is, ready to listen for hours.”

“Since the Marquis of Ravenscar went to his long home,” said Daniel, “Isaac Newton is my oldest friend. Or
was
; for your lies have made him into a bitter and dangerous enemy.”

Jack snorted. “I could see what excellent
friends
you were when you came here to parley with me on the evening of July the 28th. The suspicion on old Ike’s face was quite obvious. Oh, not suspicion
of you only
but of
everyone
. I knew then that a few words from me would set him off. And so now you are enemies. Which is of as much significance to me, as that flies are, at this moment, swarming on camels’ arses in Cairo. Your old friend, enemy, or whatever he is, wishes to tear me limb from limb. Now. This bloke, who would do this terrible thing to me, is, it seems, a sorcerer or alchemist of some stripe, straight out of a bleeding færy-tale! Just like elves and trolls, his sort are fading away, and soon to vanish from this world. A state of affairs that is as plain to
them,
as it is to you and me! But where you and I look on this as a dying-off—and good riddance!—Ike and his chums mistake it for an Apocalypse that will be their great and final triumph. Ones such as he used to come and pester us in Vagabond-camps, and we would sport with them, lacking other diversions. Just as the proprietor of a gin-house uses his customers’ lust for booze to get money to feed his family, why, I am using Ike’s lust for the Solomonic Gold to get what I require for myself and the boys. Which I’ll go on doing until I have achieved satisfaction. If the result is a
raid upon the Whig Mint hidden at Clerkenwell Court, and if in consequence you and your learned associates are brought hither in chains, it is nothing to me.”

“Fine. It is all clear. What is it then that you want?”

“Jimmy, Danny, Tomba, and I, free men, on a ship bound for America.”

“It is so noted,” said the other. “However, there is a complication of which I am obliged to make you aware.”

“My glass is only half empty, Dr. Waterhouse, and you have not even touched yours; so it seems there is ample time, if you will abandon this guarded cryptic way of speaking and only come out and say what you mean.”

“
You
may—supposing some escape were to be possible—board ship and go to America. But
she
will not.”

Jack almost shot back some waggish riposte, but then a serious look spread over his phizz, and he settled back, and waited. “You cannot possibly be talking about what I
think
you’re talking about!” he said finally.

“I know it is difficult to believe,” said Daniel.

“Even supposing—well—supposing any number of things I’m unwilling to suppose—why would she employ
you
as a go-between?”

“It is an eminently reasonable question,” said Daniel. “The answer is that she is not. I am doing this at the bidding of another—a friend of the lady in question.”

“Then I do not think much of this person’s friendship,” said Jack, “for a true friend would not dream of trying to mend what was broken so long ago. Some friend! Ha!”

“None the less,” Daniel said, “I have been asked, by the friend in question, to make inquiries. The friend is young, and she has fanciful notions concerning the power of true love,
et cetera, et cetera
.”

“Yes, as depicted in plays,” Jack said. “And by that I do not mean the vile, merry plays of the Restoration but older ones such as I attended as a lad.”

“Of a simpler æra.”

“Indeed. Yes. Though I am by no means fatuous enough to believe in such mawkish phant’sies, sir, I know how it is that young ladies, perhaps over-fond of the Theatre and the Italian Opera, can fall under its influence for a time, until Age and Experience slap them back to their senses. And so I’ll allow that this young lady who sent you may be merely
daft,
and not the least bit malicious.”

“She will be ever so gratified,” said Daniel, “to know that the King of the Vagabonds thinks so.”

“No need to jab at me, there, Doctor. ’Tis a sufficiently trying conversation,
even without your biting asides. I am getting round to telling you something of great moment, which you must relay to this meddlesome lass, and that is as follows: the woman in question said to me, a long time ago, that I’d never again see her nor hear her voice until the day I died. And she’s not the sort to renege.”